Auction Blocks

If hearts were mortgages

bought and sold like real estate

would love ever be the realtor

posting the signs and making the sales?

 

Or would it be greed that brokered

every beating parcel available,

placing people on auction blocks

as collectables to be acquired

only by the highest bidder?

 

How many thoughts would be leased

with all the chances of happiness rented out

unto the one with the most cash

who saw each face as a trophy

instead of being a jewel?

 

No bank would ever be a hospital

nor a check written to stop misery,

what sadness has already befallen the world

over than the acres of sold souls

we have as legacy in our lairs

where counting money by those with power

so often replaces calculating tears.

 

Perhaps if wealth didn’t infect as hunger

blinding minds to what mattered beyond possessions

then poverty wouldn’t be the manure of avarice

spread so generously over those the world,

fertilizing every fallow impoverished spirit

with tyranny’s toxic waste.